The Reader (28 page)

He saw her kills, one after another, the way the light went out of them, the way they collapsed as if they were sacks of stones.

He saw her at age eighteen, clutching the hilt of her newly formed bloodsword as she crept up the flagstone steps to a little cabin. She entered the front room, her memory of the place
washing over her. There was the same operating table, the same glass syringes.

Her parents' house.

She drew her bloodsword, and the blade flashed. Blood coated the steel.

First her father.

Then her mother, who cradled her crying daughter even as she died, murmuring soft and close into her hair, “Mareah. Mareah. My little Mareah.”

Lon blinked, and the lights of the Illuminated world faded away. The Second was watching him, the moon of her face rising in front of him.

She'd killed her parents.

That's
the first thing she'd done with her bloodsword?

That's
what her master had made her do?

To forsake all ties to kin and kingdom.
To ensure—to test—her loyalty. It was unthinkably cruel. And yet someone had thought of it. Their order had thought of it.

He lifted his hand. He cradled her face, with his thumb just brushing the point of her chin. “Mareah,” he whispered.

The word pooled in her eyes. She smiled—a twisted smile, with a knot of pain at the center. She had a name.

And then he was holding her. He was brushing his mouth against hers, tentatively at first and then, when she pushed back, harder, as if the pressure of his lips could for one moment make her forget her grief and horror and regret. Strands of her hair caught in his fingers, tangling them up. Her mouth was soft—softer than he could have imagined—and when he
blinked he saw bursts of sparks like fire and gold. Flashes of their entwined lives. Stolen kisses. Heated breath. The
future
. They would do great things together. Magic no one had ever dreamed of.

And then he shut down the Sight so all he felt was the movement of her lips, and all he smelled was the wind and copper of her skin, and all he saw when he opened his eyes was the shadows of her cheeks, her eyelashes like scythes, and the glass ceiling peppered with snow.

W
hen Sefia awoke, she found herself in a bed. It had been so long since she'd slept anywhere but on the ground, in trees, trussed up in a hammock in the bowels of the ship, that she spent an entire minute memorizing the firmness of the mattress, the prickling of the feather pillow. If she kept her eyes closed, she could almost fool herself into thinking she was nine years old again, curled up in her bed with her stuffed crocodile tucked in beside her.

Tears trickled down her cheeks.

Her father.

She opened her eyes, squinting in the light that filtered through the portholes. Around her, bottles of medicine, jars of ointment, and half-mended sails lined the walls. Bundles of dried herbs hung from the ceiling, filling the air with the mixed aroma of feverfew and bitter orange.

“Look who's awake.”

At the sound of Reed's voice, Sefia sat up. Her body felt heavy and cold, as if she had been sleeping in snow. She wiped her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “What happened?”

“You tell me.” He was perched on a stool at the foot of the bunk, one tattooed arm slung over his knee. He extended a tin cup toward her. “Doc said you should drink this when you woke.”

Sefia brought the cup to her lips. The liquid was acrid and citrusy, but as soon as she swallowed it, she felt less hollow, less iced over on the inside.

The captain leaned against the wall, tracing two circles over the curve of his knee, in and out of each other like snakes. “Your boy's on watch, but he'll be down at eight bells. The kid's hardly left your side.”

Sefia tipped the tin cup in her numb hands. “How long have I been out?”

“Half a day. Whatever you saw shook you up good.”

She looked away, and that was when she noticed the book on the sideboard. Someone had closed it, penned up all the ages of history between two gold clasps. It was a wonder it didn't sink the ship, taking everyone on it to the bottom of the sea.

“I saw myself,” she murmured, “the day my father was murdered.”

Captain Reed sat forward, his blue eyes burning. “You're in the book?”

Sefia nodded. “We're all in the book. That must be why they want it so badly—the people who did this. I think the book contains everything that has happened or will happen. All of history. All knowledge. Everything.”

Reed's eyebrows went up past the brim of his hat. “I thought you said they were just stories.”

“I thought they were.” She took another sip. “But now I think they're a record. Of everything we've done and have yet to do.”

“Me?”

“You. Me. Everyone.”

“I'm in the book.” He blinked a few times and passed his hand across his face, repeating, “I'm in the book. Can you show me?”

Leaning over, Sefia set the cup down and pulled at the book until it came tumbling into her arms, feeling so familiar and so utterly alien at the same time. If she used her Vision now, she knew what she'd see: a bundle of light so dense it would be like staring into the sun, as all the blinding currents of history spiraled in on each other.

This moment was in the book too. For a second she hesitated, afraid that when she opened it, she would be there—right there—looking down on herself as she read the book. She could see it, over and over, as if reflected between two mirrors, in a never-ending corridor:

Reading herself in the book.

Reading herself reading herself in the book.

Reading herself reading herself reading herself . . .

Maybe someone was reading her right now, and if she looked up, she would see their eyes staring down at her, following her every move. Maybe someone was reading the reader.

She shuddered.

But when she popped open the clasps, nothing peculiar
happened. She leafed through the pages, skimming for signs of Reed's name among the dusty paragraphs and disjointed phrases, but the stories were gone. “I'm sorry. It's too big. I could spend a lifetime looking and never find you.”

The captain sighed and sat back. “Too good to hope for, I reckon.”

“What d'you mean?”

“If I was in the book—permanently, y'know—and there was a place for me to rest, where I could exist, even after I died . . . maybe I wouldn't have to do all this.”

“All what, sir?”

“Everything.” He shrugged. “This treasure hunt Dimarion's got me on. The Trove of the King.”

Piles of gold so high you could climb them like mountains and slide back down, trailing tinkling sounds and flashes of light.

“So that's why you're going to Jahara,” she said.

He smiled sadly. “I been promised a good story.”

Sefia closed the book. From the cover, the
blinked up at her like some cataractous eye. “Learn what the book is for,” she murmured. “Rescue Nin.” She paused, her fingertip at the apex of the circle. “I had the answers I was looking for the whole time.”

“Sef—”

“If you knew how to use it, you could know what someone would do before they even had the idea to do it. You could find out the locations of treasures or the secrets of kings. You could even know where to find your enemies, and how to kill them.” When she looked up, her dark eyes were bright with
desperation. “They're in here somewhere. If I find them, I'll know who they are. I'll know where they'll be, and then I can—”

“Sefia.”

“What?”

“You said yourself you could spend your whole life lookin'.”

In her mind's eye, Sefia saw herself hunched over the book, growing frail and nearsighted as the years piled up around her and the lights of her life burned low. She dug into the pages, as if they'd squeal beneath her fingers.

“After the maelstrom . . .” The captain looked thoughtfully at the book, though he didn't move to take it. “After I learned how I was gonna die, I coulda stopped sailin',” he said, still tracing those interconnected circles on his knee. “I knew it'd happen at sea. Coulda lived forever if I'd stayed on land.”

“Why didn't you?”

“Swearin' allegiance to lords and fancy ladies? Carvin' out my survival from trees and stone? I'd rather rot in the ground.” Captain Reed regarded her levelly. “You got a choice, Sef. Control your future, or let your future control you.”

Above, the ship's bell began to toll. Once, twice . . . eight times. The sounds echoed inside her icy chest.

Then Archer appeared in the doorway, sweat gleaming at the edges of his face, his hair and clothing damp, and Sefia smiled—a real smile. He seemed to radiate heat.

And he didn't seem to notice when Sefia passed the book to Reed, golden clasps gleaming, begging to be opened.

She almost snatched it back.

But the captain gently drew it from her fingers and as he
took it down the hall, she felt its pull on her growing weaker and weaker, until she could barely feel it at all.

Archer knelt beside her, tracing the edges of her face with his fingertips.

Everywhere he touched seemed to glow with warmth, and cracks appeared in the bleak cold of her heart. She caught his hand with hers and held it to her cheek, skin to skin. “I saw my father,” she whispered.

It was years ago now, on a warm summer night,

When the boy came out of the sea.

His skin was blue and his hair was white,

And he was in love with me.

He was wild and true, and right then I knew

That he was in love with me.

In our ship we sailed for years on the ocean,

Unfettered and totally free.

And he gave all his days to his endless devotion,

For he was in love with me.

I called it a phase and made endless delays,

Though he was in love with me.

One day the waves swept him right off the ship

And dropped him into the blue.

As his skin turned to water, his hair into fish,

He asked if I loved him too.

Too late I called through the wind and the water,

“I was always in love with you.”

I was always in love with you.

L
ater that evening, while Sefia was supposed to be resting, Meeks, Horse, and a couple members of the starboard watch crowded into the sick bay to play Ship of Fools, bringing coins and dice cups and a gaming table that Meeks and Theo wrestled into the cramped cabin.

Freckled and bespectacled, with unkempt cinnamon-colored hair, Theo was something of an amateur biologist, and had recently adopted Harison's red lory, a small parrot with blue-tipped wings, which could now often be found perched on his shoulder. Sometimes he'd sing to her in his fine baritone voice, and she'd whistle back. As he grappled with the table, the brilliant red bird bobbled slightly and raised her wings for balance, chirping irritably.

Archer crawled onto the bunk beside Sefia, his knee resting against hers. Lifting a finger, he touched the green feather she'd
tucked into her hair, and she watched the smile light up his face like a candle batting against the night.

“Here, Sef. Make yourself useful.” Meeks dropped a square of canvas in front of her, and Theo placed a brush and a small jar of black paint on the table.

“Hey!” She laughed. “You said you came here to play!”

Meeks grinned, revealing his chipped tooth. “Yeah, yeah. We're here to play. But we
also
heard what you told Cap this afternoon, about us all bein' in the book and such.”

“Yeah?”

“And we were wonderin' if you'd write our names.”

Marmalade slid into the space beside the head of the bunk and tucked her honey-red hair behind her ears. She was Harison's counterpart on the starboard watch, the ship's girl, and not much older than Archer. She smiled hopefully, dimpling her cheeks.

“Of course,” Sefia said.

“Great!” Meeks clapped his hands. “Start with Harison.”

She nodded. She'd been hearing about Harison for days now, and finally she could contribute something to remember him by, something that might last beyond their words or their memory.

Too big to fit in the sick bay with the rest of them, Horse pulled up a stool and wedged himself in the doorway, his bulging muscles pressed against the walls. He winked at Sefia as she uncapped the jar of paint and dipped the brush.

While she wrote, the others leaned in, watching her sculpt the letters, each one a shivering architecture of dashes and
curves. When she finished, she showed the scrap of cloth to Marmalade on her left before passing it to Archer on her other side. After a moment, he handed it to Theo, who slid it over to Meeks, who stared at it a long time before giving it to Horse.

The carpenter held the name between his thick tarry fingers and murmured, “You miss a man so much.”

The others nodded.

You miss a man so much.

“Now mine!” Meeks cried.

Archer winked at Sefia. She felt her cheeks go hot.

Rolling her eyes, Marmalade pulled a pile of canvas scraps from a pocket of her loose patchwork jacket and slapped them onto the table.

Sefia bent over her work while the others anted up coins of varying sizes and degrees of cleanliness: loys from Deliene, caspers and angs from Everica, someone even had a single squint coin from Roku. It was these tiny details that showed the littlest kingdom's deep-rooted ties to its Oxscinian colonizers: it looked almost exactly like a copper kispe, except squints had square holes through their centers. Digging into his pocket, Archer added a few coins too.

“Where'd you get those?” Sefia asked.

“He won them last night! From me!” Theo exclaimed, upsetting the bird on his shoulder. “I loaned him some to get him started, but boy, was that a mistake. He's nearly as good as Marmalade.”

Archer grinned.

Together, they rattled the wooden cubes and upturned
their cups. Ship of Fools was a simple game played in seafaring vessels all across Kelanna. Players had five dice and three rounds to earn points, with betting before each of the rounds.

First, players tried to roll a six, a five, and a four in descending order. Each number represented something different: the six, a ship; the five, a captain; and the four, a crew. You couldn't keep a crew without first having a captain, and you couldn't keep a captain without first having a ship. Or so the logic went. Archer set aside two dice—a six and a five—and swept the other three off the table.

Sefia watched the fine hair on his forearms gleaming in the lamplight. Every short strand was pointed perfectly in the same direction, and for a moment she wanted nothing more than to trail the backs of her fingers along his arms, seeking out the shapes of muscles beneath his skin.

Her hand slipped, and a fat blotch appeared at the end of Meeks's name. Blushing, she crumpled the piece of canvas in her hand and reached for another.

Horse leaned over the table. “How're you feelin', Sef? After what happened today?”

She shrugged as they bet and rolled their dice again. After you had a ship, captain, and crew, you rolled for cargo: three for a crate, two for a keg, and one for a gunnysack. Points were awarded for bigger cargo, and the best you could hope for was two crates, or six points. The trick was in deciding when to stop rolling and stick with your dice, because there was always a chance that you'd end up with nothing. Archer picked out a cube with four pips, dropping the last two in his cup and placing a copper coin in the pot.

“Okay, I guess,” Sefia said.

Meeks shook his head. “Must be a strange thing, seein' your past.”

“Yeah . . .” She finished the
S
at the end of his name with a flourish and set the piece of canvas aside.

“You ever seen your future in the book?”

“What? No.”

They rolled for a third time. Horse grimaced at his dice and dumped them all back into his cup. Theo cursed and did the same. The bird chirped. Marmalade lined up a six, a five, a four, a three, and a one, glanced at Archer's dice, and laughed gleefully, gathering up the coins in the center of the table and stacking them into neat piles in front of her.

“But Cap said the book had the whole history of everything inside it,” Meeks said, scratching his head.

“Yeah, but I haven't seen it all.”

“So Cap's still the only one I ever met who knows his future.” He shook his head incredulously. Then, to Archer: “'Sides you, of course.”

Surprised, Archer touched the ring of white skin around his neck.

“Yeah. You know—the boy with the scar.”

Theo and Marmalade glanced uncomfortably from Meeks to Archer and back again.

“We know the story,” Sefia said wearily. “Serakeen wants him to lead a great army or some such.”

Puzzled, Meeks sat up a little straighter and cocked his head. “What about the rest?”

“Let it go, Meeks,” Horse warned.

“What do you mean?” Sefia asked.

The second mate frowned. “There's more to the story, Sef.”

Theo adjusted his glasses uneasily. “It's just a story, though. No point in tellin' it if you haven't heard it.”

“Right,” Horse growled.

The bird bobbed its head.

Sefia looked to Archer, who nodded. “No. We want to hear it.”

Meeks sighed heavily and tucked his dreadlocks away from his face. “They say he will lead a great army, and he will overcome many foes. He will be the greatest military leader the world has ever seen, and he will conquer all Five Islands in a bloody altercation known as the Red War.” His voice grew softer and softer as he spoke, and the last sentence came out as little more than a whisper. “He will be young when he does it, but . . .”

Archer had gone a sickly greenish-gray. They'd heard the part about the army, but none of the rest.
The Red War.
An escalation of the war between Oxscini and Everica? Or some new horror? They hadn't known. He hunched over, one hand tap-tapping at his scar.

“But what?” Sefia demanded.

The second mate's dark eyes gleamed sadly. “But he will die soon after his last campaign—alone.”

There was silence in the cabin.

“I'm sorry, Archer.” Apologetically, Meeks reached across the table, but Sefia smacked his hand away. Paint spattered over the gaming surface.

“I don't believe that and you shouldn't either,” she snapped.
“
He
isn't
that
boy. And don't you ever say anything like that again.”

If Meeks hadn't already been pressed against the surgeon's workbench, he would have taken a step back. As it was, he nodded miserably. “I'm sorry,” he repeated.

Sefia thrust the brush back into the paint and crossed her fingers, one over the other. “I meant it when I said you'd never have to fight again,” she said to Archer. “Never.”

He traced the backs of her fingers and nodded.

She wrapped her hand around his and squeezed once before turning to Meeks again. “How d'you know all of this anyway?”

The second mate tugged sheepishly at the ends of his dreadlocks. “I collect stories.”

Horse leaned toward Archer, tipping the table so the coins and dice began to slide toward him. The others scrambled to stop them. “It ain't you, all right?” His voice was low and deep and urgent. “It ain't you.”

“I don't
want
it to be Archer, Sef. But I'd be lyin' if I said I didn't want to be part of that story.” Meeks didn't look at her as he studied the scrap of his name. “We got such a short time in this world, you know? Cut shorter by the blasted foolishness of men. Tavern brawls, rival outlaws, wars that claim the lives of thousands. Our existence is so small that most of us only matter to a handful of folks: the captain, the crew, maybe a couple others. But bein' part of a story like that? A story that'd blow all others outta the water in its greatness and scope? It wouldn't give me more time here, but if I was part of something like that, maybe my life wouldn't be so small. Maybe I could make a difference before my time ran out. Maybe I'd matter.”

Sefia wanted to stay mad at him, but there was such sad desperation to his words, the same desperation she'd seen in Captain Reed when he asked to see himself in the book, the same desperation she'd heard at Harison's funeral when they sang his body into the sea, that her anger evaporated like water. She took up the brush again and met Meeks's gaze across the table.

He smiled sadly.

“But Serakeen isn't mentioned in the prophecy?” Sefia asked.

Meeks shook his head. “Just the boy.”

“But if he controls the boy, he wins the war,” she said.

Theo made a disgusted sound in his throat. “Outlaws used to have principles. You could claim your ship, you could claim your spoils. But the ocean was for all of us.”

“Serakeen wants more than the ocean, though,” Sefia said. “Why else would he be kidnapping all those boys? He wants the kingdoms as well as the seas.”

To her surprise, the others laughed.

“No one would stand for it,” Marmalade said. “No way, no how.”

Theo nodded so vigorously the little lory raised her wings and scuttled sideways down his arm. “Oxscini and Everica'd even set aside their differences to put him in his place,” he said.

The bird climbed from Theo to the table and onto Archer's hand. He straightened with surprise.

“But all those boys—” she began.

“They don't even come close to what the other kingdoms got,” Theo said.

“Yeah,” Meeks added, “and if you think Cap or any
selfrespectin' outlaw would bow to
any
man, you got another think comin'.”

Theo adjusted his glasses. “You don't have to worry, Archer. Like Marmalade said, no one would stand for it. The Red War's a myth.”

Horse nodded. “Got that, Meeks? A
myth
.”

The second mate raised his hands. “I hear ya, Horsey. But Serakeen believes it's true. He ain't gonna stop just because someone tells him he's chasin' a lie.”

Marmalade rattled her dice cup impatiently. “We gonna play or what?”

While they rolled their dice, Sefia looked to Archer, who met her gaze. A muscle twitched in his cheek.

“No,” she murmured. “But someone has to stop him.”